1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the Web Browser Intermediaries (WBI) and more particularly to novel applications of Web browser intermediary to the World wide Web.
2. Description of the Related Art
Web browser intermediaries (WBI) have the basic functionality of observing a stream of data (often created by a user) and using that data to modify and present the output. One commercially available WBI is Web Intermediaries, IBM Corporation, Armonk, N.Y., U.S.A. Intermediaries are computational entities that can be positioned anywhere along an information stream and are programmed to tailor, customize, personalize, or otherwise enhance data as the data flow along the stream. A caching Web proxy is a simple example of an HTTP intermediary. Intermediary-based programming is particularly useful for adding functionality to a system when the data producer (e.g., server or database) or the data consumer (e.g., browser) cannot be modified.
Thus, a WBI application can observe a user browsing the web and change pages accordingly. The WBI can suppress images, enlarge text, change the background, limit the scope of the web site, or provide the user with suggestions on links such as a red light if a link will take a long time or a green light if the link is quick. The WBI can even generate and present new links based on what the WBI observes.
WBI is an architecture and framework for creating intermediary applications on the web. WBI is a programmable web proxy and web server. The invention described below is an intermediary application within the WBI framework, using for example, Java application program interfaces.